As regular players at Tidy Bingo will know, Tidy is under new ownership now and as such, we need to settle the Tidy Savers promotion and ensure you all get your vouchers that you have saved with us up to and including 31st July 2016.

In total you managed to save £550.25 since November 2015, an impressive amount by all accounts!

On July 5th we made our 5th donation to Help for Heroes, taking the total amount donated at that point to an impressive £2,868.90! As is always the case when we make a donation, we received a letter thanking us just a few days later.

The letter thanks us for the donation and tells of his it is put to use supporting wounded soldiers and their families. If you read on, you will see a scanned copy of the letter.

As you will all know, for some time now we have seen a drop in the number of players in the Tidy Cupboard. This has continued for a while now and David and I have made a decision to change things around a little.

Rather than lose the room completely, something we don’t want to do, we’re going to try and revive it. How we plan to do that may sound a little odd but there is a method in our madness. However, it does mean that from 1st August 2016 the Cupboard is only to be open on the 1st Tuesday of every month.

As regulars at Tidy Bingo will know, the network offers a loyalty reward scheme that sees you earn extra bonuses, cash back etc. as you rise through the ranks. As a little something extra, we’re going to introduce a form of loyalty scheme into the Tidy Cupboard too.

As you will have noticed, player numbers have been dropping of late in the Cupboard and as such, it doesn’t remain viable to keep giving away as many loyalty points as we have been whilst player numbers diminish.

The Which Bingo Award shortlist has been announced today and once again Tidy Bingo has received a nomination. This year there isn’t a Best Boutique Bingo Site, the category we usually find ourselves in. For 2016, we have been nominated as Best Jumpman Gaming Bingo Site and for the first time since we launched, we’re going to put a bit of effort into winning.

It’s not that we don’t want to win, of course it isn’t, but we are always competing with brands we have bigger budgets and more players so it often feels like we are a non-starter. This year however, only five of the brands under the Jumpman Gaming hat have been nominated so our odds of winning are slightly better!

Can you believe it’s nearly March already? It seems like only yesterday that we were running Christmas competitions and rummaging in Santa’s Sack! Anyway, as the year rolls on, it’s time for another Catchphrase competition and your chance to win a selection of Tidy branded goods, maybe some Help For Heroes bits and bobs and even some bonus funds!

This time we’re going to do things a little differently (not much) and will be sending the competition by internal mail, external mail and posting on Facebook. We’re hoping this gets more people involved and who knows, with enough entries – we might even throw in a few extra prizes!

As some of you may know, I’m currently with Slimming World trying to shed a few stone. If you’ve never done this diet before then it’s worth knowing that foods are divided into categories and it is actually the only diet that I have done that I have found really easy to stick to. The only thing that I am not completely comfortable with is the weekly meetings, and whilst I know many get a lot from the meetings – they don’t really do it for me. If any of you guys want to slim along with me – feel free. I lost 6.5lbs in my first week….

That said, I have paid for 10 sessions, so I will do those and then probably just continue alone at home. Anyway, I digress, the reason for this blog post was to share one of the recipes that I made today, one that I really enjoyed and takes hardly any time to make. It’s a free food, so you can eat as many of these as you want.

I thought that I’d sit in the room and watch our biggest every free game take place tonight, the big £1000 jackpot. I wanted to see who were winners, and of course, report the outcome to all the Tidy Bingo players who were otherwise engaged.

In total there were a whopping 4,437 when the game got underway and I was on tenterhooks (as I am sure the players in the room were too).

Just before Christmas we made our fourth donation to the Help For Heroes charity thanks to the your continued support of the Tidy and the Troops game.

To date we have now donated £2238.75 with a further £49.25 raised since we last donated to this great cause. As always when we make a donation, Help For Heroes send us a letter and if you continue reading you will find a scan of the letter received.

There are many things that I love about Tidy and for those of you that know me, you’ll know that it has always been a dream of mine to run my own bingo site. From player, to host, from host to writer and then writer to site owner, it took me ten years to get here but I did.

There have been ups and downs, as our blog readers know, but one of the biggest ups happened this week. Quietly beavering away in my office, the doorbell rings with a delivery…..

Posts in the 'Netball' Category

Hi Tidyers, Rachel here with this weeks match report. Today we played Phoenix – a team we have not played before in this division. We were not quite sure what to expect as although they have lost a few games, they have always scored a lot of goals so we did think our defence would be key. We were missing our normal Centre and Wing Attack today so had to pull in a couple of players and re jig things.

It took a while to settle in the first quarter and the Phoenix Goal Shooter sunk a couple of shots from far out which rattled us a bit but some fantastic defending meant that at quarter time we were leading 7 – 4.

The highs and lows of playing a competitive game – last week I couldn’t miss, this week I couldn’t score as we played the Halos again, a team we lost to when we last met them. And all my team will say it’s a team game, we’re all responsible etc but when it comes right down to it if the shooter can’t net the ball, you’re gonna be in trouble.

We were kept afloat by Karen Dodds who sank some great shots, and at the defending end by Helen and Ashley doing what they do so well. Jackie too played so well, buoyed up by our super session with Tracey Holdsworth on Friday. Alannah Mansfield slotted in nicely as Centre in Nicola’s absence and fed well to Laura who in turn fed well in to the circle.

Anne here with my first match report for Ripon Rockets. We were all quite nervous today as we were up against our closest rivals Tigers. They were sitting just two points behind us on the league table at the end of last Sunday. We were two shooters down with similar injuries, Amanda with a major tendon injury to a finger and me with a broken finger and tendon damage from last week, so a change in the team was made for today.

From the start Rockets took the lead breaking Tiger’s first centre pass and then pressing on to win the next four goals. Again our defence were fantastic making Tigers fight for the ball. Ruth and Jo worked amazing in defence together again. Sue as WD kept with the WA and hassled her continuously putting the WA off her game. Tigers began to settle down and pulled a number of shots back leaving the end of the first quarter with Rockets leading 8-5.

Sunday saw us pitted against Sapphire Stars – quite the nicest team in the league. This was a match we were always going to win – it was simply a question of by how many. We were without our lovely Ashley today – part of our defence double act so I brought in Amy Mackenzie, daughter number two and allowing me for the first time ever to play in the same team as both of my children.

Amy is a goal attack, a brilliantly accurate shooter and a very fit netballer – but she was replacing Ashley – a goal defence. Instead we played Nicola Stubbs (our centre) as GD as she is a natural defender. She played well with our brilliant GK Helen Walton. Jackie Laugher (WD) was all over their WA – her timing has improved massively in recent weeks and she took many an intercept in the defensive third.

Helen (aka nel) here with another match report for the Ripon Rockets. Today saw another victory for us against a team that we have met many times and have generally been pretty evenly matched games between us most of the time, The Skylarks Vipers. Being three of our usual players down we weren’t quite sure what the result was going to be so we knew it was going to be quite a tough one.

From the first centre pass Rockets took the lead managing to get the ball into the circle almost immediately, even with Skylarks taking their centre they struggled to get the ball into the net the first few attempts, Rockets took advantage of this and continued with some excellent shooting. Eventually things began to turn around for Skylarks and their shooting became a bit more accurate, the first quarter finished 9 – 5 to Rockets.

Hi Tidyers, Helen back again and this time with a match report a little overdue from last Sunday. This fixture saw us take on the league leaders so we were quite rightly nervous. Herons (terrible name) are a new team but they DO have a history. Last year they played as Spartans and got promoted. A big fall out in the summer split the club into two – the weaker players demanding to keep the name Spartans and therefore the promotion and the better players forming a new team in Division 3 – Harrogate Herons. So really Herons are effectively a Division 2 team going through the motions and the necessary hoops, biding their time against the likes of us until they are promoted at the end of the season

However, they hadn’t banked on coming up against Meteors! My God we were awesome! I am by nature an attacking player; in defence I am like a rabbit caught in headlights so I am in awe of my defensive unit of Helen Walton, Ashley Anderson and Jackie Laugher. Nothing fazes them and although goals win matches, not conceding many also helps. The communication between Helen and Ashley in particular is improving week on week (we will miss Ashley this coming Sunday when she has decided that a weekend away with her hubby and baby is preferable to a netball match. Pah – no commitment some people!)

Hi Tidyers, Rachel here again with the match report for the Rockets vs Hotton Hotshots. We were expecting a tough game. We played them twice in the League last year, beating them both times but only just! We also played them in the Cup Final last year and we were behind by six goals going into the last quarter and pulled it back in the final seconds to win by one goal – so we were expecting they would want pay back!

They have only lost once so far in the league and have being beating teams with really high scores but we set off really well and were five goals up before they managed to score their first goal due to some fantastic defending from Jo & Ruth in the circle and Debbie on the wing.

The Ripon Rockets vs Tigers match reports has been written today by Joanne Binks. Old habits die hard and, as usual the Rockets got off to a slow start, finding themselves behind at the end of the first quarter. A change of ends signalled a change of speed, precision and accuracy for Rockets. The attack fed the circle with ball after ball. Both Ann(GA) and Rachel(GS) consolidated with a flurry of goals giving the Rockets an impressive lead.

Not wanting to be outplayed Tigers came out like caged animals after half time challenging for every ball, but the Rockets defence proved too strong causing Tigers a raft of indecision and unable to get the ball into their attacking circle.

Hi Tidyers – Rachel here, Captain of Ripon Rockets. Today we played Harrogate Spartans – a team that we played last season and only just beat on two occasions. However they have seen a change in players since last season, a second team has been formed.

We were expecting an easier game today after last weeks tight game. We did have to re-shuffle things as we have a shooter out for 6 – 8 weeks after tearing a tendon in her finger in last weeks game and another player unable to play.

Helen here with another match report for the Ripon Meteors.Well this morning’s match didn’t go as planned. A breakdown in communication (read between the lines – I am being diplomatic!) meant that I had to umpire instead of playing – it is better to lose than to forfeit – so we had to play with six.

Superb defending once again from Ashley and Helen kept us in the game while Nicola valiantly played both a Centre and a Wing Defence, marking two people, running everywhere, taking some amazing interceptions. As one of the spectators from the other team commented at the end of the match ‘Your Centre worked her t**s off!" and she did.